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Crews to sieve sediment for artifact
Published November 29, 2009
FREEPORT — Containers of sediment soon will connect Freeport with a Civil War-era gunboat sunken 146 years ago in Galveston Bay.
Archeologists last week raised a 10,000-pound cannon from the ocean floor. The cannon was from a Union gunboat blown up by its crew during the battle of Galveston in 1863.
While the cannon itself was brought up by crane in Galveston County, crews plan to sift for small artifacts among mounds of sediment brought by barge to a Freeport marine yard. Any artifacts found in the mud will be categorized and trucked to Texas A&M University in College Station for further study.
“Most of the hull would have been held together by iron-pinned fasteners, bolts, nails, so there is going to be a large quality of that type of artifact,” lead archeologist Bob Gearhart said.
Archeologists began searching last week for the remains of the USS Westfield, to allow for the deepening of the Texas City Ship Channel by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, according to the Corps.
The $71 million project will deepen 7 miles of the 40-foot channel by five feet.
Crews will scoop up the sediment across a half-acre stretch of ocean floor using a clamshell dredge aided by a global positioning system, said Gearhart, an investigator for PBS&J Corp.
The sediment will be moved from the dredge through a giant strainer, which will catch artifacts larger than 6 inches across, and into 20-foot-long containers, Gearhart said. Any artifacts the strainer does not catch will fall into the containers.
Crews will move the containers onto barges set for J&S Contractors’ grounds, Gearhart said. They should begin arriving next week.
Scott Glick, owner of the contracting company, said the project is a good thing for the area.
“It’s going to be interesting,” Glick said.
Crews do not plan to move the sediment from the containers to the ground once they arrive in Freeport, Glick said.
Archeologists instead will sift for artifacts by hand inside the containers.
J&S Contractors had a hand in finding the 9-inch Dahlgren gun from the murky ocean floor, Glick said. The Freeport company’s crane raised it Nov. 18.
“You’re seeing something that hadn’t been seen in 150 years,” he said. “It’s a once-in-a-lifetime deal.”
Nathaniel Lukefahr covers Freeport for The Facts. Contact him at 979-237-0151.
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